What could be said twenty years ago is even truer today: The U.S. food retailing business has never been more competitive. A number of trends are putting pressure on food retailers of all stripes, from supermarkets whose bread and butter is groceries to supercenters and drugstores for which food is a smaller but still crucial part of the product mix. Foremost are: 1) food deflation driven by heavy discounting; 2) shakeups among major chains; 3) heightened brick-and-mortar competition spurred by Germany-based discount retailers ALDI and Lidl; and 4) the incursion of e-commerce onto the food retailing landscape.

For value grocers, the good news is that many of these trends bode well for the value grocery business as a whole. On the other hand, with the expansion of discount/limited-assortment chains including ALDI and Lidl, it appears value grocery will be at the epicenter of some of the most aggressive competition the grocery industry has seen since the Walmart-driven supercenter invasion of the 1990s.

For a large majority and still growing number of Americans, value retailers are where it's at when it comes to grocery shopping. Supercenters attract 177 million U.S. adults as monthly shoppers (more than traditional supermarkets), wholesale clubs kick in 91 million, dollar stores draw 53 million, and discount/limited-assortment grocery chains like ALDI lay claim to 42 million.

And that's just for starters. As of early 2017, the value grocery business is heating up for what may be the hottest contest since the advent of Walmart supercenters. Not since Tesco's Fresh & Easy has a European grocery chain created such a buzz on the other side of the pond prior even to opening its first store, and right now the big word on the street is Lidl. Fresh & Easy was a colossal flop, but there's no reason to expect anything of the sort from Lidl, a German discount/limited-assortment grocery chains grocer à la Germany-based ALDI.

Fielding more than 10,000 stores in Europe, Lidl has cut into ALDI's European business and, along with ALDI, forced into deep-discount mode massive competitors including Walmart's Asda U.K. grocery unit. As of early 2017, Lidl plans to open at least 100 U.S. stores per year on its way to a buildout of as many as 2,000 stores. Already on the defensive, ALDI has gone into accelerated expansion mode with the goal of growing its U.S. footprint to nearly 2,000 stores by the end of 2018 and by almost 50% during the next five years, accompanied by a $1.6 billion plan to remodel and expand 1,300 of its U.S. stores by 2020.

Also girding for deep-discount battle is Walmart. In January 2017, Walmart announced plans to add 10,000 U.S. jobs and raise the minimum wage for its U.S. workers, and began testing a new low-price strategy aimed at undercutting ALDI and by extension Lidl. Like Target, Walmart is also investing in smaller stores designed to better compete with discount/limited-assortment grocery chains and dollar stores, the latter of which began cutting into Walmart's bread and butter during the Great Recession.

Also contributing to the ramped- up competition is e-commerce, particularly as Walmart and other grocers get serious about taking on Amazon and home delivery grocery services like Fresh Direct and Peapod. Outlaying several billion dollars, Walmart has snatched up e-commerce players including Jet.com, Shoebuy.com, and Moosejaw.com, and Walmart and other value retailers are now implementing bricks meet clicks services deigned to coordinate online grocery ordering with in-store pickup. Increasingly, such services involve smartphones and apps designed to help shoppers avoid lines and in some cases scan and pay as they go.

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